


Endgame: A Homelander x Queen Maeve Story

by annie000expatriated



Series: Endgame: A Homelander x Queen Maeve Story [1]
Category: The Boys (TV 2019)
Genre: Beating, Bondage, Canon-Typical Violence, Exhibitionism, F/M, Imprisonment, Mass Death, Rape, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-07
Updated: 2021-02-05
Packaged: 2021-03-18 08:40:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 6
Words: 17,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28615248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/annie000expatriated/pseuds/annie000expatriated
Summary: What happens if that video of the airplane full of people whom Homelander didn’t care about enough to save…Is leaked to the public?Maeve in Season 2, Episode 2: “Homelander and I went to this Oscar party for 'Twelve Years a Slave.' There was this producer...he chatted me up all night. Two days later there’s a fire in his office. They found his head in one room and his torso in another.”Maeve Season 2, Episode 8: “You’ll stop hunting Starlight. You’ll leave Elena and I alone. And you’ll let them go...or I release this.”Homelander: “If you do that, I’ll destroy everything. And everyone.”Maeve: “Great. As long as everyone sees what a fucking monster you are. As long as no one ever loves you again.”
Relationships: The Homelander | John/Queen Maeve
Series: Endgame: A Homelander x Queen Maeve Story [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2096784
Comments: 36
Kudos: 36





	1. Chapter 1: The City Lines Are Down

_Musical inspiration for this story is "Endgame" by Rise Against.[Check it out here! ](https://youtu.be/8gX2kDsaYg0) _

**Chapter 1: The City Lines are Down**

Maeve lit her tall glass bong and drew deep from it. She heard the familiar gurgle of water bubbling and the click of her lighter. The couch shifted beneath her as she leaned in towards the coffee table.

She stifled a cough. Maeve rubbed her eyes. She blinked to clear them of smoke. It was top-shelf cannabis, thick with resinous crystals and giving off a sweet scent that reminded her of blueberries. 

She breathed it out, and tried to think of nothing. A movie played on the television in front of her but it was only background noise. She didn’t even remember the title. She saw well-dressed men drinking expensive liquor in a casino and didn’t notice much else.

Her apartment was still a mess, she thought. She had finally cleaned up most of the glass and knickknacks she’d destroyed when Elena left. The table that she threw across the room was gone, all the broken dishes swept up.

Yet the clear coffee table that she rested her brown glass bong upon was also home to an overflowing ashtray, a half-empty packet of cigarettes, two pill bottles, and the stale remnants of a sandwich. There were empty glasses of wine, with a tall clear bottle of the best Russian vodka nestled in between them.

_I used the video of the plane. I have a copy of that right here in the apartment, another in a safe at the bank, and another stashed in the cloud. She doesn’t have to be afraid of Homelander…_ Maeve thought.

_But she can’t stop being afraid of me._

Maeve had left her intoxicated messages, and texts that she later regretted sending. Now, she couldn't even remember how long she had been on this bender. Days of drugs and loneliness blurred together with nights of anonymous sex. A glance at the clock in her small open kitchen told her that it was late afternoon. She was alone for now.

She felt the cannabis take hold, weighing her down and softening the edges of her loneliness. Maeve sank back into the couch with her eyes shut. 

The familiar shoulder pad, corset, and leather skirt of her Supe suit felt sweaty and dirty. She couldn’t remember when she changed last. One of her arm bracers was beginning to smell like dirty bong water.

_I should get a cat. That’s what normal people do after a breakup, right? They don’t throw tables, then beat up a Kraut and blackmail America’s favorite monster. While occasionally banging strangers until they can’t see straight. Or, I should say...look gay. At least that fucking “Brave Maeve” crap is over._

_These are strange times we live in…_

Maeve felt a giggle rise in her chest. An echo of it reached her lips. The bud, she thought, was making her laugh at herself for the first time in weeks. Her mouth was parched. She tried to remember if she had any orange juice left in the fridge.

Off to her left, she heard an alarm blaring.

Her eyes shot open and her head whipped towards the window. Her long auburn hair twirled about. She saw only her familiar cream-colored living room curtain, backlit by the late afternoon sunset. 

Yet there was a cacophony outside. She had to strain to hear anything from ninety-nine floors up, but it was as though a hundred distant sirens all began sounding at the same time. 

She rose to her feet. Her tall black boots reached above her knees but she was so accustomed to them by now that they were as comfortable as pajamas, as familiar as a second skin. 

She reached her left hand towards the creamy, off-white fabric of her curtains. 

Glass shattered. The curtain burst into flame.

Maeve leaped backwards. She felt thousands of tiny pieces of glass strike her skin like sharp hail. 

They bounced off; she was Super after all. She had thrown herself in the path of an armored truck and watched it split in half around her instead of making her a red smear on the New York pavement. 

She raised her arms into a fighting stance and looked about, as though surveying a battlefield. Heat rose on all sides of her. Her mouth was thick with smoke. 

Where there had been bookshelves, there was now only fire. The three walls of her living room were engulfed in this climbing blaze, spreading higher towards the ceiling as she watched. The fourth wall was taken up by her window, now broken and without its curtain. It looked out upon the light of a fading day.

Maeve stumbled into the middle of the room. She was many times tougher than an average person but not invulnerable, she thought. She had longer to escape a burning building but she still had to get out. _What the hell is this? What could have--_

She stared into the kitchen...or, rather, where her kitchen used to be. 

The bent, mangled remnants of a blue and white police motorcycle had been thrown through her window so hard that they were stuck into the plaster of the far wall. The bike smelled as though it had been drenched in gasoline. The wheel spokes were wrapped with some kind of oily rags.

This huge steel bike was on fire.

Cracks spread outward along the plaster of the wall where the engine impacted it. Her refrigerator was crushed. Her sink and all the cupboards beneath it were nothing but debris for the rapidly-spreading flames to devour.

She felt cool night air against her back. It blew her long auburn hair towards her face.

Maeve spun to face the broken glass hole that used to be her living room window. On all sides, fire rose around her.

She gasped. Both of her hands flew to her mouth to stifle her own scream.

Homelander stood in the sky, watching her. There were fresh streaks of blood in his hair. 

He was perfectly still. Not flying; hovering in the air with one knee slightly bent. The stripes of his cape danced with every gust of wind. White lines were shot through with streaks of blood. His red-gloved fists rested at his sides. 

The gold eagles at his shoulders reflected the fire with a bright, wet shimmer. They were drenched in fresh blood.

His muscle-hugging navy blue leotard was soaked with the same sticky, liquid red. He stood no more than a few arm’s lengths out of her window, close enough for her to see individual rivulets of it on his stomach and chest. It even dripped off of his eagle-crested boots.

Homelander’s eyes blazed electric red. At full power they lacked any trace of the human pupil, iris or white. She saw nothing but a hollow, soulless, angry crimson. Behind him the sun in the West illuminated clouds with pink-red shades that faded to orange closer to the ground.

Maeve blinked the smoke from her eyes and stumbled towards the window. She saw something in his right fist but couldn’t make out any details in the fading light of sunset. The size and shape of it reminded her of a large purse, or a dark shopping bag.

The fist rose. He tossed it at Maeve’s feet. She saw his lips twist into a self-satisfied smile. His strong, angular face was covered with rivulets of fresh blood.

She stared down at her feet. She saw a long mane of black hair spreading out across her carpet, growing thicker where it led towards…

A woman’s face. She wore large metal earrings that resembled simple flowers woven of shining silver wire. Her skin was dark olive. Her round, deep brown eyes were open, seeing nothing.

_Elena._

Blood pounded in Maeve’s ears. The fire still rose around her and Homelander still stood outside her broken window smiling at her, but she saw nothing else in the moment. Her chest felt like it had been caved in by a giant fist and her stomach twisted. Bile rose in her throat. It tasted bitter. She felt herself shaking, from the headpiece around her brow to her tall-booted feet.

It was Elena’s severed head.

Maeve fell to her knees and screamed. She didn’t know how long she knelt there, beside what was left of the woman she loved. 

Heat rose around her. Smoke filled her eyes. The flames were licking closer to her body. Blood and gasoline were thick in her nose.

She gradually became aware that Homelander was talking. Her head snapped up towards him. The deep baritone of his voice pierced the growing night. Behind him, the sun had almost set.

“Hello, traitor.”

He flew in through the broken remnants of her window. His feet came to rest on her soiled carpet. 

He extended an open hand to her, palm upward. It was the same gesture he had used when offering to carry her away from the airplane on that horrible day, when they had left everyone else to die. He opened his mouth as though to speak.

She saw the hand falter. He studied her face, reading the obvious shock there. His brow creased. His eyes returned to their icy shade of blue.

“What...you’re not going to pretend that you didn’t put that video on some cloud storage somewhere, are you?”

Maeve rose to her feet, unable to stomach the sight of him looking down on her from above like that. She wrenched her mind away from Elena. She focused on forming coherent words. 

On all sides, the heat rose higher. The flames crackled in her ears as they turned her walls, her furniture, her home to smoke and ash.

“Months ago.” She gasped. “I had to keep copies...it was my only insurance against you.”

“Well, isn’t _this_ rich.” Homelander gave a short, mirthless laugh. “Not only do you smell like you just had sex on a pile of the good old Mary Jane, but you haven’t even turned on the news today. Russian hackers.”

He reached out to her once more, palm open. “Remember when you took my hand? I should have let you die with the rest of them. If I did...this wouldn’t be happening, now would it? Still, I’m giving you a choice.”

Maeve felt her own flesh beginning to burn. He stood untouched by the fire around him. Her arms were beginning to blister and crack.

“Roast with Elena, or take my hand again. I told you that I would destroy everything and everyone. I’m keeping that promise. But you die last. Because _you_ have to see it all. You have to watch it.” 

She wanted to strike him with all of her might. To lash out with her strong fists and beat him to the ground. 

But she knew it was futile. She imagined how long it would take her Super body to burn, and the agony of it...while he stood over her and watched. Then he would no doubt fly out her window. Off to find another target.

_No. I will stop you. I can stop this...somehow._

Maeve stepped towards him. She placed her white, soot-streaked fingers against his leather-gloved ones. Her palm was immediately soaked in blood. It dripped off of him.

She took his hand. 

He wrapped an arm about her waist…

And flew her into the darkening Western sky. 


	2. Chapter 2: The Kerosene’s Run Out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What will he make her witness, and what will he make her do?

****

**Chapter 2: The Kerosene’s Run Out**

Queen Maeve felt the chill of nightfall against her skin where it was exposed. The wind flapped at her dark maroon leather skirt and its pewter-colored embellishments. Everywhere her body touched his, she came away sticky and red. 

The world rushed beneath her in a darkening blur. She tried to get her bearings. At last she recognized the waterfront on one side of the Hudson River, the dividing point between New Jersey and New York. She had a vague idea of how close she was to the Statue of Liberty and the One World Trade Center. But she couldn’t pick either one out in the swirl of city lights and darkened sky.

“You _stink.”_ Homelander muttered. “Get ready to hold your breath.”

_Seriously?_ She blinked to herself. Somehow, his priorities always managed to shock her. _You’re literally covered in streaks of dead people, and you can’t take the smell of cannabis and sex?_

He tilted in the air and aimed them both downward. Water rushed towards her. She held onto his hard-muscled body. He felt almost like a statue to her, covered in a thin layer of flesh and cloth.

The impact of his dive sent water flying upward like a fountain. She felt the chill as it closed around them. 

For her Super body it was no worse than when a shower is a little too cold. The water weighed down her springy auburn tresses and plastered them against her skull. 

They broke the surface and flew upwards again, towards the dark sky. City lights made the stars almost invisible. 

She shook the water out of her hair. It fell in damp ropes down her back. Her Supe suit wasn’t too weighed down by this immersion. It was designed to be durable after all.

Queen Maeve looked at both of their bodies. The two of them were soaked. Homelander still had streaks of blood in his hair and on his suit. At least the worst of the odors and stains had been washed away. His dark blue leotard no longer dripped red.

He held her close to him, high above the city. She felt his hands begin to roam over her skin. 

He stroked her shoulders, then the swell of her hip. Homelander traced his hands back and forth where her bottom met her thighs. He reached beneath her skirt. She felt his lips on her neck, kissing and nibbling. One hand slid inside the top of her corset to grip her right breast. She gasped, shook, and ground her teeth in silence. 

“The Russian cyber attack.” He met her eyes again. She saw his face twist into a grimace. “The one you didn’t hear a single word about. They fucked around with the power supply a little. Caused outages. Well, it happened at the worst possible time for Stormfront. The doctors were trying to put her back together when the local grid went ass over tit for an hour.”

He winced and shut his eyes for a moment. Closing them to the city around him, lost in his own pain. “By the time I got to Stormfront, she was brain-dead. The surgeons working over her couldn’t do anything.”

Far below Maeve recognized the long green rectangle of Central Park. 

The outline of the large reservoir beneath her resembled a duck’s webbed foot, or a splotch of paint. Above and below the reservoir she saw clusters of baseball fields, bright tan in color when all around them was green. To Maeve, they stood out like acne scars. 

She recognized the circles of many hiking trails, and the deep green darkness of the Ramble.

He gripped the back of her neck with one hand. His fingers tightened. They pressed hard against her skin. She heard the leather squeak. 

He leaned in to kiss her. His mouth invaded her own, probed its deepest secrets. His other hand cupped the right cheek of her bottom and squeezed it hard, over and over again. Pumping her flesh, grinding her against him. 

She arched her back towards him and gave a single gasp before she even realized it. 

He broke the kiss and met her eyes. His smile shone with triumph.

“So...the surgeons.” He continued. “After I was finished ripping their arms and legs off or cutting them down the middle with my eyes, I saw what was happening on the news. The Russian hackers also got some interesting video off the cloud. Yes, _your_ video. Now, Vought’s official position is that it’s fake but no one really believes them anymore. It took less than a day for the riots to start. They’re burning effigies of me, you know. I cut through those people on my way to you. Only to find, you don't even know what you did.”

He gripped her wet hair in his red-gloved fist and stared straight into her eyes. “I have nothing to lose, Maeve. And that’s because of you. You did this.”

She saw the long rectangle of the park grow larger beneath her. Wind whipped hard at her wet hair. She realized they were descending, flying closer to the Ramble beneath.

He pulled her in for a deep kiss. She felt the muscles of his body against the curves of her own. The pressure of his arms made her think of a prison’s iron bars and a baby’s swaddling at the same time.

His lips released their grip on hers. He pulled back, and stroked her cheek with one gloved hand. The expression on his face was remote. He cast his eyes down at Central Park below him as though he were a god looking upon the city of Pompeii. _Preparing to order the volcano to blow,_ she thought. _Because he wasn’t given sufficient offerings._

“The only person I ever loved is gone.” His deep baritone rang through the night air. His eyes lit up red once more. The electric hum grated against her ears. “And now the world doesn’t love me. Perhaps now...I know what it really is to be Super. You stand alone in your soul. Those people look so _tiny_ from up here. They are like action figures, that you break and throw out. Because you have an unlimited supply.”

He aimed the inferno of his gaze at the greenery of the Ramble beneath. 

And fired. Not one blast but a long slice, from the American Museum of Natural History to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Both collapsed into rubble. Pillars of dust rose into the night.

“I'm under no obligation to allow these people to continue breathing.” His words rang in her ears. “All they had to do was show me the proper respect. That's just the rent you have to pay to live in this world. But you, you had to go and ruin everything. So you get to watch it all get ruined. You've got no hold on me. No one does.”

Trees and buildings in the path of his eyes burst into flame. The fire spread, lighting up the night with an orange glow. It illuminated the strong angles of his face. Heat soon buffeted them both. 

He sliced again, and again. The blaze spread. The two Supes rose higher into the air. 

Soon Maeve looked down upon the entire rectangle of Central Park. Before the sun set today the park was a deep patch of greenery, reminding her of a welcome mat in the middle of gray buildings and crowded streets.

Now, it was a solid brick of fire. It filled the sky with smoke. Her mouth felt as though she had stood beside a barbeque as the meat inside of it was charred to cinders. 

Maeve beat her fists against his chest with all her might. It was like a marble wall.

His hands were all over her, feeling every inch of her skin. He kissed and sucked at her neck. She shivered. He nibbled at her ear. 

“I should have known.” She hissed at him. Maeve felt tears running down her face even as her body arched towards his, her hips bucked in response. “I should have seen you for what you are from the very beginning. How were you ever able to fool anyone?”

“Yes.” He whispered in her right ear. She felt the heat of his breath. Even the scent of him was familiar, and the taste of his mouth. “You should have. You should have known what I would do if you pushed me. Now you pay for it.”

He bit down on her neck. “I have to bite you a little harder than the other ones, but that’s part of the fun.”

They flew over city lights again. He turned his eyes back to the road that sped along beneath them. She recognized the boulevard that led from Central Park through Harlem. They were close enough to the ground to see individual cars, but not people.

He sliced a straight line down the road, cutting a lane of cars in half. She saw him smile with satisfaction, as though this was his version of a kid popping bubble wrap.

Homelander returned his strong hands to her back, her breasts, her neck. She felt his erection pressing against her thigh through the fabric of his tights. 

“I’m through with these people.” He whispered into her damp hair. “I’m not going to sacrifice for them. I won’t perform. I won’t let them move me around like a pawn anymore. They are all pawns now, and I am the only king on the board.”

Flames and chaos receded beneath her. They climbed ever higher into the air. He turned Northeast, in the direction of Boston. The world beneath her became a mix of city lights and fires, growing ever smaller in the night.

“You remember when you were in love with me?” Homelander fisted her hair and pulled her head back. Her deep blue eyes met his, a paler shade that had always reminded Maeve of ice. 

“Goddamn it.” She spat the words at him. “I remember when you _tricked_ me. The charming superhero with the big muscles and the fancy gifts… you really laid it on thick with the flattery too. I was younger then. I didn't know any better. Then you were moody, and selfish, and couldn’t keep it in your tights--”

He shook his head and made a tsk-tsk sound. His hands wrapped around her buttocks. His fingers dug in. “Now, that's not all you got out of me, was it? You loved the spotlight. Being on my arm elevated you from a superhero who doesn't even have flashy powers to the queen of them all. Someone wanted to live up to her name, didn't she? And, let's be honest. It's just the two of us here after all.”

He smirked down at the world below them. It was nothing but distant dots of light now. Some of them were streetlights, others were sites of flame and death. 

“You really are drab. No lightning, and it's not like you can shoot fire out of your little red snatch now can you? I treated you like a queen. And I made you feel like one for the first time. After all, your father was such a lazy bum. He couldn't keep away from the casinos. You told me all about the tables at Circus Circus. You told me everything. You loved me. Be honest.”

Maeve ground her teeth. She felt her body shake against his. Cold night wind raised goosebumps on her skin. The air tasted thinner.

It struck her that if he was up here discussing their relationship with her, he wasn’t killing anyone in the city below. Didn’t she have a duty to them, she thought? In the very least, to keep him talking…

She gripped his face in her hands and stared straight into his eyes. “Yes!”

The word tore forth from her throat. It felt like it left a wound behind.

“I did love you. I honestly did. So much. I loved the way you made me feel. There was always something magnetic about you.”

A smile spread across his cheeks. She felt it beneath her fingertips. It reminded her of a satisfied cat. He raised both eyebrows.

_“Was?”_

He paused for a long moment, letting the word hang in the night. She saw the moonlight reflected off of the angled planes of his classically handsome face, now that they had left most of the smoky air behind.

“Most of the blood is gone. I can smell something else on you, you know.”

“Homelander.” She gritted her teeth so hard they ached. “You killed the person I love.”

He reached for her clothes. She clasped both arms around his neck the moment his own grip loosened. 

His fingers found where the corset of her Supe suit met her leather skirt, and then worked their way into the undergarments beneath. He held everything she wore below the waist in opposite red-gloved fists, one at the small of her back and the other below her belly button. 

He knew his way around her clothes. Her suit had not changed in design at all since they had dated for years. 

He tore the skirt in two. The panties, too, ripped from her body like tissue paper. He released the shredded fabric into the sky without another glance at it. 

She was naked from where her corset ended to where her boots began. His right hand delved between her legs. He covered her mouth with his own. The taste of him invaded her senses. She felt her own wetness and tears began to flow down her face. Her breath came in shallow pants.

“You mean, there is something magnetic about me. _Is._ No, you don’t love me. Obviously. No one does anymore. I decided I don’t need it. But you, you still _want_ me. I can feel it. You want me like a dog in heat, or a whore.”

Her chest heaved. She sobbed into his mouth. His hand covered her wet folds and his fingers slipped between them.

“The world belongs to whoever has the power to claim it. And that’s me. Those little people down there have no right to keep it to themselves. It’s my playground now. But for you...I have decided on a place. A special place. It’s deep underground, the only way in or out is to fly. I need somewhere to rest my head, don’t I? And I want to taste this cunt whenever I do.”

His gloved hand found her clit and began grinding against it. She gasped and stifled a scream. Her shoulders trembled. 

His tongue invaded her own for a long time before pulling back again. Her lips felt bruised from his hard kisses, from his brutal claiming of her mouth. “You know...you have relieved me of a burden. I felt like I was carrying the world on my shoulders, and now I am free to shrug it off. No more pretending to care about _their_ right to pursue happiness anymore. All I have to do is pursue it...for myself. It’s liberating, really. No one has to _let_ me do anything. They can just try to stop me. And they will always fail.”

His hand probed deeper. She rode it, bucking against him. With each moan that escaped her throat, Maeve wanted even more to throw herself down out of the sky. To be obliterated on the ground below, at last. To end the nightmare.

_No. I can stop him. Somehow. Keep living, Maeve, so you can. Who else will?_

She saw the city lights grow larger. A chill shot down her spine as she realized they were descending again, into a “fresh” part of the vast world below.

“Wait!” She gasped. “Please. You've made your point. New York is on fire. Wherever you're taking me? Just take me there. This is enough.”

His perfect teeth showed as he smiled. Buildings grew larger beneath them.

“Oh no, Maeve.” He shook his head once. His blonde hair had mostly dried in the wind. “You don't get to decide when I've had enough. If you wanted to be able to, you shouldn't have put the video on the cloud like that.”

The sheer, indiscriminate nature of what followed blurred together for Queen Maeve. He left behind patches of lifeless bodies the size of a football field, where his eyes swept through crowds of protesting citizens like a scythe. Then, he lay a single hand upon her brow and removed the pewter-colored headpiece that resembled a crown. 

“You’re hardly a queen anymore. You don’t need that.”

He sliced across the base of an apartment building and watched it fall against the one next to it like a domino. 

“You can’t fight to protect them anymore, now can you? Take off those stupid things on your arms.”

Homelander flew low to the ground and cut a jagged line down the road with his eyes. Maeve was close enough to see a college-aged brother and sister running down a sidewalk. The brother was cut down the spine, the sister still holding onto a blood-spattered hand.

“Take off the boots now.” Homelander ordered. “You’re hardly running to anyone’s rescue ever again.”

No clothes remained on her body except for her corset. 

He brought down the roof of a shopping center and watched people scurry away as it collapsed. They ran through clouds of smoke. She saw a thin layer of concrete dust on everyone's face. It was in their hair, and on their clothes. She heard coughing and screaming. 

“Take off your top. The last of your Supe suit. You don’t get to hide anything from me.”

She unfastened it. The built-in support peeled off her body. Queen Maeve’s nipples, the same pink shade as her lips, stood exposed to the air. She wore nothing now, not even jewelry.

Everywhere, there were lights and sounds of helicopters. She passed many places where the ground was lit up orange with fire.

She heard the unmistakable sound of automatic weapons but it was as though it came from everywhere and nowhere, bouncing off of streets and buildings in a cacophony.

Late into the night she realized that the city lights had grown remote beneath her once more. They became sparse, then vanished. In time the two of them flew through cold moonlight. Beneath the waning moon she saw desert sand. 

She had struck him with her fists in vain and cried until her body felt numb. 

She hated herself for responding to his hands. For returning his kisses. And, then, at last…

For falling asleep against his chest.

When she awoke she felt a dull pain in both of her shoulders and nothing at all beneath her bare feet. She opened her eyes and saw only the moonlight shining far above her, filling up some sort of vast concrete space that was webbed with metal stairs, walkways, and platforms.

Her arms were in chains, fastened at the wrist. They were stretched apart. She was suspended with nothing to support her, nothing to push against. She was still naked. Her hair fell in her face. 

Homelander’s voice bounced off of the concrete and steel all around. Her head snapped towards it.

He rose into the air above her. His flag cape billowed in the moonlight. His features were lost in shadow.

“Hang in there.” His laughter echoed. “You’ll see me again soon. I’m just going for supplies. And...other things.”


	3. Chapter 3: The Fracturing of All We Relied Upon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The nature of Maeve's prison becomes clear.

**Chapter 3: The Fracturing of All We Relied Upon**

Queen Maeve craned her neck up towards the light. She no longer saw stars or the pre-dawn indigo that precedes a desert sunrise. Her mouth was going dry. The air tasted of metal, sand and dust. Her long auburn tresses brushed the top of her naked breasts when she moved her head.

She tried not to think of New York, or the lifeless eyes of the woman she had worked so hard to save. It hadn't backfired. It had blown up in her face with all the force of fifteen kilotons of TNT.

She tried not to imagine what Homelander might be doing right now. 

_Elena. I'm so sorry._

Morning began in the world above. The sky was a clear, bright blue. She heard nothing but the occasional gust of wind echoing through her prison.

_Elena. You were smart, and kind, and gentle. I left you for the spotlight. I stayed away to protect you from Homelander._

_Then I came back into your life just to get you killed._

_Whatever this prison is…I am starting to think I earned it._

Her prison resembled a vast tunnel, but vertical. Sunlight showed her more of the walls around her. They were rounded into the long cylindrical shape of a silo. The diffuse light of morning showed her they were smooth gray, stretching many stories higher than where she hung. The walls immediately surrounding her were made not of solid cement but many large concave pieces stacked together like bricks.

If she shut her eyes, she saw cities burning. So she kept them open and studied the walls around her.

Direct sunlight still hadn’t reached where Maeve hung. The air chilled her bare skin. She was suspended from a rusted metal scaffolding by thick chains that clanked when she tried to pull at them with her arms. The sound echoed off of the walls. 

Her neck and shoulders ached. Her feet felt strange, floating in the air for so long. She knew that a normal human would be dead by now, but her Super body could take a lot of punishment. 

_I’m just not Super_ enough, _apparently. If I was, I wouldn’t be chained up naked while he burns the world._

_Elena…_

She looked above her, and below. The scaffolding sat upon a metal platform that reminded her a bit of a supermarket shelf. It was painted white and textured with small holes. The platform’s surface was reinforced with straight metal beams like the ceiling tiles in an office building. 

She saw that the steel platform beneath her was one of eight, set up in a circle. Each one had enough space for her to stand at the center and swing her arms about, but not enough for two people to do so. 

There were two more circles of them above her, and one circle below. But the others were raised on their hinges and fastened against the wall. The ones around her were lowered for use, like an old wall-mounted ironing board or a Murphy bed. 

Queen Maeve watched the shadows change as more sunlight filtered down to her. As the walls formed a circle, so too did the bright blue space where one might expect a ceiling to be. 

She noticed that the end of each platform was not flat but concave, as though it were designed to rest against something circular. Across from her was a thick metal door painted soft sage-green. It looked heavy, of the sort designed to withstand an explosion or a fire.

_A silo in a desert…_ The clues resolved themselves in her mind as more light found its way into her prison. _Only way in or out is to fly, Homelander said._

She was in a long concrete tube, underground, with an open top. The catwalk beneath her was designed as a path from the metal door to what this silo used to contain, something similar in shape and size to a rocket. 

There was no reason to keep a NASA rocket underground. But there were many reasons to keep a missile ready to launch yet safely beneath the earth, and an obvious reason why it wasn’t there anymore. Without any of the obvious fire damage that would have been incurred if the missile was ever actually used. 

She had to be in one of those old nuclear missile silos she had heard about. She had even seen pictures; most of them sat rusting away beneath someone’s farmland. This one, too, had to be sitting unused like so many others after the Cold War ended. Decommissioned and empty of its weapon. 

Even the chains and scaffolding she hung from were probably left over from the work crew that had taken the missile apart.

A shadow darkened the sky over her head. Maeve’s blue eyes snapped up towards it.

She saw the familiar outline of a striped flag cape. Above it was a boxy, rectangular silhouette. Homelander was carrying a large white van from beneath. He set it down on the catwalk at her left.

Queen Maeve felt a strange swell of relief in her chest at the sight of him. Not for the obvious reason--that he was the only person likely to let her down from her chains and allow her a drink of water. 

She felt as though being in his presence made her mind switch targets. From herself, to the enemy. 

When she was staring at his face and imagining ways to kill him, she didn’t have to think of Elena’s dead-eyed gaze.

Queen Maeve heard the creaking, groaning sound of strained metal supports, echoing off of concrete walls. The steel complained under the weight but it held. 

The van looked battered and nondescript to her, with no logo decals or side windows. The windshield faced her and she saw the driver’s seat was empty. She couldn’t see into the body of the van.

Her eyes fixed on Homelander. The deep navy blue of his suit looked clean enough but blood splatter stood out against the white of his cape. His blonde hair was combed back. His blue eyes appraised her naked body as though it was a stolen marble sculpture. He smiled.

He released his grip on the van and floated through the air over to her. His red-booted feet came to rest on the white metal catwalk.

Homelander reached both hands out to direct her face towards his for a kiss. His lips pressed hard. His tongue invaded her mouth. He kissed down her neck, one inch at a time. He kneaded her breasts with both hands and she felt her eyes flutter shut. His fingers dug in hard. 

She didn’t even see him reach up to break her chains. She heard metal snap. Broken chain links clattered to the metal catwalk beneath.

“You have to leave those on.” He whispered against her skin. “I might need them later.”

Queen Maeve still felt the weight of chain links encircling her wrists but they were only forearm-length steel hanging free, no longer attached to the scaffold. Instead of letting her fall, he guided her to wrap herself around him. Her naked arms encircled his neck. Her legs wrapped about his waist.

She knew the texture of his suit well, its wiry navy blue fabric with accents of red and gold. She was familiar with how it felt against her bare chest and inner thighs. Something felt different this time. It was as though he had been dusted with a thin layer of tiny, grainy, porous rocks. They resembled shards of driveway gravel.

She broke the kiss and pinched a bit of the eagle-patterned fabric on his chest between her right thumb and forefinger, examining it. Whatever was stuck to his suit, it was black against the navy blue.

His eyes followed the direction of her own. “Oh, sometimes the suit picks them up when I go into space.”

Maeve startled. She tried to remember if he had ever mentioned being able to do that, and then tried to imagine why he would be doing so now. Her brow furrowed. 

He carried her as he talked. Soon she felt the metal surface of the van pressing against her back. He whispered a few words in her right ear about the van being full of supplies, but he had come home hungry for something else. She felt his hot breath against her cheek. 

She asked him why he went into space. 

His arms encircling her, she felt him shrug. The golden eagles rose and fell once. “Easiest way to take out a whole city is dropping something big and hard on it. Can't be too _much_ of a rock, I have to have a place to come back to after all. A meteor the size of a thirty-story building is about right. It was as good as the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, with none of that radiation to worry about.”

Queen Maeve’s hands flew to her mouth.

She felt a tremor within her chest. It spread throughout her body. She stopped breathing.

She released her grip on her own face and reached for his. She dug her fingers as hard as she could into his skin. Her heart sank to her feet. She studied the impassive lines of his face. 

“Goddamn it, Homelander.” The words emerged through teeth gritted so hard she felt like they might crack. “What did you do? How many people…”

He gave her another shrug and a small smile. “I told you, Maeve. I’ll destroy everything, and everyone. Well, Phoenix? The capital here in Arizona? There’s nothing left. Not even the suburbs.”

He returned to kissing her neck and grinding against her. She heard him unclasp his golden eagle belt and lower his pants.

_No. Oh hell no, it can’t be…you motherfucker..._

She felt the swollen head of his erection pressing against her slit. 

_Four and a half million people._

She remembered it from when she had to do some promotion for a movie.

He pinned her against the flat, white back doors of the van and rammed his cock into her wet core. He threw his head back and roared out his pleasure. His body claimed hers.

She felt the heat of his every thrust inside her, the hard muscles of his stomach against her own.

Queen Maeve gasped for breath. Each pump of his hips pushed her own against the rear doors of the van, denting them inward. She felt herself grinding against him. Fire built in her belly even as hatred burned in her chest. 

The chains were still around her wrists, attached to nothing. They clinked against the vehicle as he rammed into her. The sound echoed through the missile silo.

She felt something shift inside her mind, something deeper than will or decision. She studied his face as she would a battlefield. Her mind became clear.

_You are my enemy. I focus on you._

_I have to work on my tactics. To stop the enemy. And I can’t afford to think of anything else._

_Not even the dead._

Blackmail didn’t work, she thought. Leverage, a relationship, outright begging as he destroyed cities...nothing. He had no problem killing millions of people. Yet he had already told her that he wanted to keep her alive for now...

_Make him spend his aggression on me._ Queen Maeve’s mind seized upon the thought. _I can take it. The world can’t._

The pace of Homelander’s thrusts quickened. He leaned in to kiss her lips again--

“Goddamn it, you motherfucker!” 

She spit in his face. In the growing sunlight she saw her own saliva run down his nose. 

His eyes flashed to red. The electric sound echoed off of the concrete walls around them. He raised one red glove and backhanded her across the face--once, twice, half a dozen times. 

She felt the familiar taste of blood in her own mouth. It wasn’t like he’d never done that before. He was still inside her, and now he pumped his hips more violently. The door of the van bent further inward.

Queen Maeve locked eyes with him. “What the hell are you even trying to prove, you overgrown little boy? You gotta lock me up and make me take your dick now, because no one would touch it if--"

Both of his gloved hands closed around her throat. They tightened. She heard the leather squeak.

“You shut the fuck up.”

She gasped for air. Queen Maeve felt her vision begin to darken around the edges. She clawed at his arms. 

Homelander’s body shivered against hers. He drove his cock into her core one more time. She felt it pulsing inside her, and then it gradually began to soften. His grip loosened at the same time.

He gathered her long auburn mane in his left fist and aimed her face towards his. She noticed that he had wiped her saliva from his nose and cheek. Homelander’s eyes searched her own. His face was creased with puzzlement.

“You _wanted_ me to hurt you. You were egging me on. Why?”

His grip on her hair grew tighter. Queen Maeve winced. “Answer me, and don't try to lie. You know I can tell.”

She pursed her lips. _If I tell him I don’t want another city destroyed,_ She thought. _He might go out and do it just to spite me. Give him half the story…_

She brought her bare hands up and placed them over his gloved ones. Queen Maeve drew in a deep breath. “Before I...did what I did with the video...they were all alive. There used to be a city of Phoenix, Arizona. You knocking me around a little isn’t much next to that, now is it?”

Homelander studied her eyes for a moment. Then a wide grin spread across his face.

“Oh, Maeve.” He stepped back from her, leaving her naked body seated on the rear bumper of the white van. He fixed his pants until his Supe suit was neatly in place once more.

“No. No, it’s not. I could come home and beat you bloody every night, right before we went to bed. For ten years. That wouldn't balance out all the death you are responsible for. Nothing could. Might be fun...but I have plenty of others for that. You _will_ see it, though. There’s a TV and a radio. This place gets the news.”

He crossed his arms over his chest and regarded her. Looking down, while she was seated. Homelander raised one eyebrow.

He pointed a single gloved finger at the sky far above; at the hole that led to the world outside. “You know, out there...some of them will slobber all over me. They run, they shoot, or they freeze up. But some of them crawl to kiss my boots or suck my prick. If I feel like it, I let them. I put them facedown in the dirt and _use_ them. I told you, Maeve. The world is my playground now. But you’re special. It's you and me, you know? Even though you’re still a traitor. _Trying_ to get me to hurt you? Now, that’s something different. I kinda like it. You’re like one of those...what are they called? Self-flagellation monks.”

Homelander stepped towards her. Queen Maeve almost gasped in shock when he knelt down on the white-painted steel catwalk before her. 

His palms came to rest where her thighs met. He spread them wide.

“But, I’m not doing what you want me to do.”

He buried his face between her legs. She felt his kisses on her inner lips, his tongue dancing across her clit.

He paid steady attention to her pleasure as it built. His fingers dug into her thighs hard enough to bruise, but this only pushed her closer to the edge. 

She wrapped her legs around his shoulders. Her hips bucked at his face. She worked her fingers deep into his thick blonde hair. 

Her climax ripped through her even as tears spilled from her eyes. She couldn’t keep silent as she came. She stifled most of her gasp but the noise she made was enough to make him look up at her and smile. 

She looked down at her own fair skin and saw how flushed it had become.

He rose to his feet and planted a single kiss on her forehead. Where her crown-like headpiece used to be. 

He stepped back from her and gave a single approving nod. Then he gestured towards the open steel door on the opposite side of the silo. Queen Maeve still hadn’t seen what lay beyond it, except for the beginning of a long hallway. 

“I’m flying across the Atlantic this time. Your place is ready for you. I took care of the staircase so there’s no way out. But there’s power and water. The beds, the fridge, the TV, it’s all still here. Supplies are in the van, along with the help.”

Queen Maeve blinked. She looked from him to the van behind her, then back again. She rose to her feet, feeling off-kilter. Her chains clanked as she moved. “The _help?”_

“Now, no scissoring with them while I am away. That's not what I grabbed them for. I just need a hot meal and a warm bed once in a while. Somebody has to wash my clothes.”

She felt faint. The words poured forth before she could stop them. “People...in the van?”

“Clothes for you too. You’ve earned them.” 

He winked at her once, looked up…

And shot upwards into the blue sky.

Queen Maeve regarded the back of the van. It had the sort of doors that open at the end, and they had both become dented inward by his thrusts into her body. 

She gritted her teeth and placed her Super hands on the rear doors. Like ripping off a bandage she yanked them both free; not only open but off of their hinges entirely. Echoes of steel against steel filled the concrete silo.

Queen Maeve blinked and stared into the van.

She saw that it was stocked full of canned goods on one side, the sort of staples that might fill the industrial kitchen of a large hotel or banquet hall. On top of a box of canned tomatoes she saw someone’s luggage, half-closed, with women’s clothing spilling out. Beside that sat a neatly folded stack of white sheets and towels.

On the other side, two women sat with rags stuffed in their mouths and their hands tied in front of them. Both were dressed in gray service uniforms bearing the Vought International logo, the stylized “V” that resembled both a slash and the number seven.

_Oh, you son of a bitch._ She thought. _Of course you did._

_You needed a place to rest your head. So you raided a Vought building somewhere, either a hotel or a tower. You robbed it of supplies and people, and put me in a hole with them._

_Then you railed me against this van. They heard it. Goddamn you, Homelander._

She met two sets of eyes. The set closest to her belonged to a young black woman with long hair in many tight braids. Her braids were gathered into a bun at the back of her head. Her dark eyes were wide, looking up and down Queen Maeve’s bare body with obvious shock.

Beside the woman sat an older white one, dressed in a similar uniform. Her light brown hair was gathered up in a hairnet. She was staring not at Maeve but at her own feet. 

Maeve blushed scarlet and reached for the first sheet on top of the stack. She wrapped it around herself. She focused on the luggage and grabbed the rolling suitcase, the one full of women’s clothes. It was a stranger’s clothes, she thought, but she would have something to put on her body at least. She set it against the bumper.

Without looking directly at their faces again she removed the rags from their mouths and untied the ropes at their wrists. The chains about her own made this unwieldy. She could break them, she thought, but he had ordered her not to. Homelander had told her to leave them in place.

The young black woman spoke up immediately, while the older white one remained silent. Her voice was soft but it still echoed off of the concrete. “Wait. You really are. You’re Queen Maeve. I didn’t recognize--”

“No.” She broke in, still not meeting the eyes of either woman for more than a second or two. “Not anymore. My name is just Maeve.”

She held up her chained wrists to demonstrate. Maeve then pulled the sheet tighter around her naked body. 

“Whoever you are...welcome to Hell. And I’m sorry.”


	4. Chapter 4: Let’s Shed This Unclean Skin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Long-term imprisonment and coping with it.

****

**Chapter 4: Let’s Shed This Unclean Skin**

Maeve’s low-heeled red shoes rang out loud against the metal grate. She walked down the long hallway towards the living quarters.

Her shoes were hardly practical for walking around in an old missile silo and launch facility. Homelander often brought her flowing dresses in a domestic style, with uncomfortable pointed heels or flats. He wanted her to look good for him. He had called her a pearl, and this prison her shell. The air tasted stale and dead in her mouth but she hardly noticed it anymore.

This morning she had put on a red a-line dress patterned with tiny white flowers, and red shoes to match. The outfit made her auburn hair stand out all the more. Today she wore it swept up in a messy bun instead of hanging loose.

She walked past a map of the facility but did not glance at it. She knew the layout by now. She had come to know it intimately over the past six months.

The design of this place was simple. First, the vast empty space where the missile used to be, and all of the steel stairs and platforms once required to repair and maintain it. Then a long hallway that was rounded at the top like a tall, clean, well-lit sewer. The metal tube that served it for a roof and walls was green. The floor was a grate painted black.

This long tube was followed by a set of rooms that led to the staircase before Homelander demolished it. Rooms full of heavy steel doors.

Next, a shorter hallway that lead to the three floors where the handful of people once stationed here spent most of their time. Two floors dedicated to the buttons and switches of archaic Cold War machines, preserved f or a museum for years before it closed down recently. The plexiglass protectors over many of them were still there. They were not part of the original design but a protection against the greasy fingers of tourists. The old keys were in place, launching nothing of course.

She followed the familiar path to the living quarters on the top floor. There was a rounded metal ceiling above her head, a simple living room and adjacent kitchen, and a king-sized bed. Homelander had brought in a large bed for the two of them and moved the bunk beds that were originally there down to the bottom floor, for “the help” to use. Maeve wasn’t sure where the chef and cleaning woman were at the moment. She often spoke with them both, though the younger one was much more talkative than the older one. Homelander hadn’t bothered to learn that the sixty-year-old chef was Cleo, and the cleaning woman in her early twenties was named Marisol. 

Most silos like this one were in the process of rusting away, Maeve knew. This one had been preserved as a museum until the nonprofit operating it went belly-up. The “for sale” listing had only been up for a short time before Homelander took this facility as his own.

_Like the rest of the world._ Maeve thought. She stepped into the living quarters. She spread her skirt around her as she settled onto the sofa. She glanced about her familiar prison.

The roof and walls around her were painted a soft retro shade of green that would look out of place even in a hospital. As this was a museum not too long ago, it was decorated in a style reminiscent of when it was built. Not the original furniture of course, but with sofas, a coffee table, and decorations that would not look out of place.

The L-shaped couch beneath Maeve and the loveseat beside her were both textured in shades of white and dirty yellow. The furniture was rounded at every edge, giving it a classic “atomic” look. Bright red throw pillows were scattered about the seats. The hanging light fixture was made of polished brass and held incandescent bulbs. 

Maeve reached for the remote. This, at least, was modern, with access to newscasts and hundreds of channels via satellite. 

She heard the television before her spark to life. The screen was luxuriously large, the picture clear. The voices of two men in suits talking over each other filled her ears. In the bottom left corner of the screen she saw the familiar logo of VNN: _Vought News Network._

The man on the left broke in. “Now, wait a minute there. You _made_ him. And he has been destroying cities all over the world for six months now. How are you not completely culpable?”

The man on the right of the split screen leaned in towards the camera. “This is a Nazi conspiracy, you understand, pushed on us by Frederick Vought. We did the best we could to control a disaster unfolding and channeled it to serve the American public, which we did for generations. Anything coming out now is the result of a profound destructive intent originating from the socialists. Do you know what ‘Nazi’ stands for? Why aren't we punishing these anti-American socialists who by definition are members of the Nazi cause? Stormfront was responsible for everything that he--”

She changed the channel and settled in. The white letters against a red background that denoted the British Broadcasting Corporation were a much more welcome sight. For the past six months commercial newscasts had sounded like a flock of parrots in a frenzy. Saying nothing, but doing so as loud as possible.

The public ones had reminded her of a pool of still water in the heart of a lush forest. Quiet, deep, and full of life. 

She often got lost in the voices of ordinary people. The call-ins, the interviews, the stories. One after another spoke to her heart. The reporters either recited facts calmly, allowed some sort of expert on the subject to do so, or they interviewed people personally impacted by recent events. BBC News was the only way the voices of common folks could reach her prison. It made her feel like she was still a part of the world outside.

Maeve saw the lines of a familiar photograph fill up the screen. She shut her eyes. She had seen it before. 

She did not attempt to close her ears. But she couldn’t bear to look at the picture again. It was pixelated in places yet still unmistakeable. Bright red stripes on fabric and flesh stood out. They drew the viewer’s attention in.

**_BBC Newscaster:_ ** _This iconic photo was taken six months ago by a news helicopter. Shortly after the Homelander Rampages started._

_The woman in it has come forward to share her story with us. Elizabeth is one of many people left wounded in the wake of Homelander’s attacks. But the world knows her as, “The bloody flag girl.”_

_Now, Elizabeth, there’s obviously a lot of details we don’t need to focus on. Let's talk about how you survived to be with us here today. You were a student at Arizona State University’s Downtown Phoenix Campus. When the famous video of the plane was first leaked, you attended a campus protest. As many people did, all over the world. What was everyone doing before Homelander arrived?_

**_Elizabeth:_ ** _Someone was giving a speech, and someone else was burning an American flag. It wasn’t very organized, everyone was just milling around. A lot of people brought a flag to burn. And signs. Then he...dropped out of the sky. And cut a bunch of us down._

**_BBC Newscaster:_ ** _But not you._

**_Elizabeth:_ ** _I was bending forward to pick up a water bottle. The red beam passed over my head. Then...I don’t know, I just hit the deck. Lay flat. I held still but he must have seen me, because he walked over and kicked me in the ribs._

_I started to...well, I panicked. I told him I was a good American. Proud, loyal, united, troop-supporting, hardworking, patriotic, gun-owning, flag-waving, free, all that. I was blurting out nonsense really. I kept saying I was good, really good. I said I wasn’t there to protest. I was just passing through._

_I don’t know what I was thinking. Someone right next to me was laying there in pieces, and they had dropped a flag at their feet. It wasn’t burned. I just kind of grabbed it and pulled it up to right below my eyes, like a kid hiding under a blanket. Then Homelander started laughing._

**_BBC Newscaster:_ ** _Take your time. You did the same thing the rest of us did, you know._

**_Elizabeth:_ ** _Putting myself under a flag?_

**_BBC Newscaster:_ ** _Indeed, Elizabeth. All of my neighbors are still doing it. So am I. When we knew he was out for blood and not going to stop...well, if you couldn’t find a bit of the old stars and stripes, you just made something with ribbons or paint and put it on yourself. And one over your doorway. And one on your car. It has been the new normal for the past six months now. It’s no guarantee against the Homelander Rampages. But a flag is better than nothing._

**_Elizabeth:_ ** _One of my friends said she doesn't even notice the flags anymore. That it’s like in the Book of Exodus. Pray that the Angel of Death will pass you over. Sometimes it works. Or at least it works a little. It did for me._

**_BBC Newscaster:_ ** _That’s what our viewers wanted to know most, I think. From the photo it wasn’t clear if the...student in it, you, was still alive._

**_Elizabeth:_ ** _(Sarcastic) I like how you put that. You mean, the naked woman. You don’t have to tiptoe around me, okay? I hid under the flag and he laughed. He said that if I was trying to gift wrap myself for him, it wouldn’t work. Not if I was wearing anything else besides that._

**_BBC Newscaster:_ ** _You did what you had to do._

**_Elizabeth:_ ** _What I_ did _was take off all my clothes and wrap myself in the flag. Then he took me into the air. He put his...hands everywhere while we flew, then set me down on the rooftop._

_I did everything he wanted. Enthusiastically, you might say. I even...you know, put the flag down like a bed. He wanted me on my stomach._

_(Deep breath) He can tell when you lie. I wasn’t just passing through. I really was there to protest. I was lying about owning a gun, about being patriotic...I mean, before all this I never really thought about my country one way or another. Never even left Arizona._

_Before the Homelander Rampages began, I worried about my student loans and my GPA. I didn’t watch the news. I didn’t care about history. I ignored all the wars. I’m not some proud American. Never was. Always a person trying to survive, and that’s all._

_That’s why he used the old electrical cord first. I lied to him._

_Now I can’t even go on the internet without seeing that photo of me whipped all bloody. Everyone says that I had more stripes than the flag did. They make comments about how the blood soaked into the white parts. I passed out while he was...on top of me. By the time I woke up he had finished and flown away hours ago. I never even saw the news helicopter that snapped a photo._

**_BBC Newscaster:_ ** _It was a striking picture. A sunburned, dark-haired woman laying on an American flag. Stars under her head, stripes under her body. Naked, facedown, with all of those cruel marks on her. Our viewers kept asking us if you were alive, and we had to tell them that we didn’t even know your name._

**_Elizabeth:_ ** _(Through gritted teeth) No. Don’t look at me like that. You know where the news chopper was going? They were also the first to take pictures of the crater where my city used to be. The city where my family lived. And everyone I went to school with._

_Homelander thought I looked good naked. That’s the only reason I am alive and talking to you today. How is that fair? That I ended up outside the blast radius. The rooftop was many miles down the highway from Phoenix. He played with my city, then wiped it off the map. So I have a few scars on my back now. They don’t matter, do they? Not next to that._

_I picked up a damn_ water bottle. _Then I satisfied a mass murderer. That's why_ I _get to live instead of_ them? _It's not right, you know. It's just not. I’m obviously not better than the people he killed. I’m worse. I wasn’t supposed to be spared. I just got lucky._

**_BBC Newscaster:_ ** _Elizabeth’s story is one of untold millions over the past six months. People who were from Phoenix but happened to find themselves outside of Homelander’s targeted city. People from Seoul, Beijing, Mumbai, or Ontario. Citizens who were not home at the time. In internet support groups they have taken to calling themselves the Lucky Away._

_The pattern of Homelander’s actions is not clear. There are the up-close attacks, upon a group or a structure. And then there are the meteor strikes where he chooses an entire city to destroy. The one thing we are certain of is that cities are his favorite targets. Either to terrorize for a time and then leave, or to simply obliterate._

_Five cities in six months, all in different parts of the world. There is almost nothing left of them, but countless others have been devastated._

_Needless to say this has led to people fleeing to the less-populated rural areas in droves. The term “flyover country” has a new meaning that it did not have six months ago. Areas Homelander will fly over and ignore, instead of land upon and destroy. Coming to us from a refugee camp in Scotland, our reporter Clarke has more. He--_

The sound cut off. Maeve opened her eyes to see Homelander standing beside the TV.

His back was straight and proud, his blonde eyebrows raised. He smiled down at her. His red-gloved finger still hovered over the tv’s “power” button. Every hair on his blonde head was combed into place. 

Maeve didn’t even realize she was glaring at him until she saw the triumphant gleam in his eyes. _He keeps trying to get a rise out of me._ She thought. _He gloats, I attack him...and I always lose. It’s like a game to this monster._

He had made her wear those chains about her wrists for a month until he’d accidentally broken them himself by throwing her against a wall. 

Maeve met his ice-blue eyes. “So, you heard all that?” She asked him. “Elizabeth?”

Anger did not bubble in her chest every day anymore. Not after six months. But she had seen that image on her screen for what felt like forever by now. Not constantly, but it kept popping up. She didn’t have internet access down here, only satellite television and radio. She still couldn’t miss it. But until today she didn’t have a name to go with it, or a story. The details of it felt like razor blades in her mind, slicing away at her psyche.

He stepped towards her. Homelander walked around the white coffee table and swept his cape to the side so that he could sit down next to Maeve. He laid one red-gloved hand on her chin and tilted it so that their eyes met. “Why would I have bothered with her name? I remember that day though. Six months ago, right after you started all this.”

She realized it had been weeks since they’d shouted at each other and he was probably spoiling for a fight. He appeared to find it exciting when she rose to his bait. He had even joked that it was what came before the best sex with her.

He reached the other hand around to loosen her bun. Her long hair fell loose around her shoulders. She heard the squeak of his stiff leather gloves. 

“No wonder you feel bad for that side piece.” He smirked. “A mud person, not Super like us. But she _was_ a traitor, like _you._ Bet she didn’t tell the British guy how hard she begged me to fuck some respect into--”

_“Shut up!”_ The words escaped her throat before she could bite down against them. Maeve tried to rise to her feet. 

He grabbed her forearm in one blood-red fist and pulled her close. His dark navy blue suit pressed against the red and white fabric of her dress.

“No.” Homelander shook his head once. “No, I don’t think I will. She was a traitor. Traitors have to bleed for me. When she knew I was on to her fucking lies, the slut begged me to put the cord down and use her in every hole. I did...eventually. Oh, you don't want to hear about that do you? I wiped Seoul off the face of the Earth and you didn't get half as mad with me. You're just like I am, you know. You only care about her because she's _here,_ and she's just like you.”

He leaned in, closing the gap between them. He smelled like smoke and blood. 

_No._ She thought. _You’re wrong. I care because I can’t get her voice out of my head. And I care because I spent my life believing that something was good. That the symbol you stretched her out on wasn’t perfect but it meant something positive. Something proud._

_And now it’s nothing but a bloody blanket. Literally._

“You son of a bitch.” She hissed. “It’s been months now. When will it end, damn it?” 

“Not anytime soon, my pearl. That one was so sorry for what she did that I decided to let her live. Now, when I gave your girlfriend the same treatment--”

Maeve began to scream.

  
  


***

  
  


Hours later, most of the furniture was broken. Their blows had split the sofa in half and thrown shreds of polyester stuffing all the way to the edges of the room. The pale sage-green metal walls had new dents.

The bed was still intact. Maeve lay supine upon it, staring up at the green-painted metal ceiling. The white sheets on the bed were bloody and ripped. The red dress and simple underclothes beneath had been torn to shreds. Maeve was stretched out supine on the mattress. It felt sticky beneath her. 

Her body ached as though it had been beaten with lead pipes. She could still smell Homelander on her skin.

Her ears pricked up at the sound of voices in the doorway. Homelander’s deep baritone echoed off of the steel around them. 

“Cleaner. You take care of all this. I’ll be back with another truck full of new couches and stuff later.”

He paused. Maeve didn’t turn towards them but she heard a whimper beside him. She recognized Marisol’s soft voice. Her tone sounded more like fear than pain. She had not seen him lay a finger on them in any sense. Most of the time they were practically invisible to his eyes. “The help” was beneath his notice.

The sound of his blood-red boots on the metal floor echoed in the room. “I think she’s so tired of being locked up that she wanted me to kill her this time. Can’t have her hanging herself with a bedsheet after I leave. Tell the other one that if I come home and Maeve is dead, so are you both. I can pick up another cook and a cleaner anytime. I can’t get another Maeve.” 

His steps receded down the battered steel hallway. Maeve soon drifted off into sleep.

She was on her feet again the following morning. Homelander often hurt her, she thought, but never as much as the others. 

Her Super muscles were better suited to unload the new sofa and other supplies than Marisol and Cleo’s average ones. At this point Maeve couldn’t remember how many trucks he had brought in through the missile silo, then lifted back up out again once they were unloaded. Food, clothing, furniture...all the necessities and small luxuries of life were delivered in this way. She wondered if there were a dozen empty vehicles scattered around the desert somewhere above her like empty cans of beer. 

This set of furniture was more or less identical to the last one. Rounded, yellow and white, in a retro atomic style. She hadn’t asked but she supposed that there was a warehouse somewhere nearby. With everyone in it dead, of course. Probably lasered in half. She carried in a tall stack of fresh white sheets.

Maeve sat upon this new L-shaped sofa. She seated herself in front of the television once more, this time wearing a flared white dress with red flowers embroidered upon it. The news was on but she stared at nothing. Maeve heard nothing.

The screen went dark. Maeve looked up to see Marisol’s long-fingered, delicate brown hand on the “power” button. 

Their eyes met. Marisol walked over to the small stereo a few paces away and switched the radio on. Soft classical music began to play.

Homelander had indicated that there would be no “street clothes” for the help, only the appropriate uniforms. Cleo still wore sets of white cafeteria clothes and the “cleaner” standing in front of Maeve wore a simple gray and white dress uniform that would look at home on the staff in any hotel. There were white sneakers and socks on her feet. Her long braids fell loose to below her shoulders, reminding Maeve of well-oiled ropes on a ship at sea.

“I think you should find a…” Marisol paused, as though searching her mental library for the right words. “You know, a coping project. A thing to focus on so that you don’t have to think about anything else. Like how Cleo won’t stop making bread.”

She paused. Her full lips curled into an ironic smile. “And yelling at me. She tried to throw a cup of flour at me yesterday but just spilled it on herself. I felt bad for laughing.” 

Maeve felt the ghost of a smile cross her own lips in response. “What about you, though? What do you do when you need to take your mind off of everything?”

Marisol looked to the side for a moment, breaking the older woman’s gaze. She seated herself on the couch beside Maeve, with room between them for either one to stretch out and get comfortable. 

Their eyes met once more. “Before, I used to relax with my friends doing each other's hair. Now I do the braids and listen to the radio.”

Maeve’s eyes fixed on the intricate, perfectly regular box braids that framed her friend’s face, falling in even curtains on either side. “I could do your hair.”

The younger woman gave a soft chuckle. “No offense, but you obviously couldn’t.”

Maeve knew she had to tread carefully. The differences between her own auburn mane and her friend’s afrolatina crown were obvious. She shifted on the sofa until she was visibly sitting upon her own hands and leaning backwards a bit.

“I mean, I could learn. It’s a skill, right? Like knitting or anything else. It’s not like we don’t have time. At this point it’s practically all we have. Time. We are floating in an ocean of time, aren’t we? I should find a way to take my mind off of things. If it is okay with you, I would like to learn how to make those braids as well. Why wouldn't I? They look great when you are finished but they take a lot of work. Just like bread.”


	5. Chapter 5: And Start to Feel Again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After two years of Rampages, Cleo has an unpleasant revelation.

**Chapter 5: And Start to Feel Again**

Maeve studied the skin beneath her fingertips as she applied gentle pressure to Marisol’s hair. She gathered those dark strands in the regular, square-shaped sections that gave box braids their name. They hung down from the scalp instead of being braided flat against it, like cornrows.

She had heard this skin compared to things like chocolate or coffee, but of course that was nowhere close to accurate and not human enough. It wasn’t _like_ anything else, except warm polished wood perhaps. But then her own hands resembled the same. She was maple and ash, while Marisol was mahogany and dark walnut. 

Homelander had made crude jokes about being able to detect Marisol’s scent on Maeve's hands. Maeve had simply met his eyes, and narrowed her own.

“Women do each other’s hair. Obviously. Are we supposed to go to a damn salon? _How?_ We’re friends and she’s straight. Now tell me, am I lying?”

He had laughed, but backed off at least. 

And so, Maeve had found herself growing proficient at braiding during the past two years. The Homelander Rampages had dragged on upon the screen before them for close to twenty-four months by now. 

Maeve now sat upon the yellow sofa, facing the television screen. Marisol sat on the floor in front of her so that Maeve didn’t have to reach up to braid her friend’s crown, and they could both see the screen. 

She heard soft footsteps at the threshold of the living room and glanced up. She saw the familiar features of Cleo, clad in her simple white chef’s uniform as always. She spoke to them both without making direct eye contact.

“I heard Homelander bring in a truck and fly off again. I’m not unloading it all by myself.”

She spun on her heels and began to stride down the rounded steel hallway. The other two rose to their feet and followed a few paces behind her. 

Soon they had all stepped into the long, tall underground tube that had been their only connection to the outside world for two years now. Maeve looked up to see the tall concrete walls, partly lit by the afternoon sun. Above them, the Arizona sky was a bright and cloudless blue.

The white-painted steel catwalk beneath their feet was lowered to support a large black cube van. Upon the side of the van Maeve saw a cartoonish, painted flag design. It almost resembled a finger painting. 

It was nothing more than six red stripes, a patch of blue paint, and a few crudely painted white stars. Beneath this, in white paint, a single world was scrawled.

The black van was painted with a flag, and then a word. “Please.”

_As in,_ Maeve thought. _Please pass us by. Here are your offerings._ She had seen it discussed on BBC News, along with many photos and video clips.

She heard Cleo make a questioning noise. It wasn’t loud, but it echoed in the silo. As the cook and the cleaner spoke, Maeve’s eyes widened in surprise.

_Is she just...not looking at the news anymore? She doesn’t talk much, but I thought..._

As Maeve listened to the other two women, the picture became clear. Cleo had been under the impression that Homelander was still simply _taking_ what he wanted. But the terrified public everywhere had been presenting him with “gifts” for a long time, and their provisions were often drawn from these offerings. 

Cleo’s eyes widened. She pursed her lips. 

The gray-haired woman made a gesture at the other two as though she were swatting away a storm of flies. Her arms flailed at them to get back, to get away, to give her space.

Maeve felt Marisol’s hand on her bicep. The two of them retreated to the sage-green steel doorway, while Cleo remained standing upon the white steel catwalk.

Both of them focused their eyes on the old woman’s back. Her gray hair hung loose. Her shoulders were trembling. 

Steel rang against flesh and bone, wrapped in a nondescript white uniform with a flour-dusted apron. Cleo had fallen hard to her knees.

Cleo was holding a photograph. Maeve stood several paces back, able to see over those narrow shoulders but not put a hand upon them.

Not that she would have. Cleo had never reacted well to that from either her or Marisol. They had both watched Cleo lose herself in her own mundane routines--cooking, baking, and complaining incessantly about minor annoyances. She was in the room while they listened to newscasts but rarely commented upon them. She had taken to sleeping a great deal even for a woman in her late sixties.

She now knelt beside the boxy black van with an American flag painted upon it. Her bony kneecaps were pressed against the white metal grate of the platform beneath her. 

She looked at the painted flag, then the picture in her hands. One, then the other, and back again.

Her shoulders sagged lower with every breath. She buried her face in her hands for a long moment, then dropped her fingers from her eyes and focused on the photo.

It was worn around the edges, as though she had carried it around in a wallet or purse. It was printed on glossy photo paper rather than simply pixels on a screen.

In it, Maeve saw the older woman in a much better state. It was recent. No doubt taken less than five years ago. The lines in Cleo’s pale face were not much lessened. But her hair was dyed brown and sharply cut. Now it was long, gray and ragged. In the photo, unlike in the moment, her face bore a wide smile and her eyes shone with pride.

In the photo, she was kneeling down to put her arms around three smiling grade-school kids. All had chestnut-brown hair and wore bright costumes. They all carried plastic orange pumpkins with black handles, of the sort used for trick-or-treating. Maeve recognized the old woman’s three grandchildren. She had seen one or two other photos.

The granddaughter on the left wore a blue Cinderella costume with a wand and a tiara. Her smile revealed two missing baby teeth. Her brown hair was swept up in a crooked ponytail with a few barrettes holding her bangs out of her eyes.

The granddaughter on the right was dressed up as Queen Maeve. She even wore a long synthetic auburn wig.

The grandson in the middle was dressed up as Homelander. Chestnut hair stuck out in tufts from under a cheap blonde wig.

“I’m sorry.” Cleo whispered. “I’m sorry.”

For a long time she was silent.

She pocketed the photo and rose to her feet. She stepped forward and banged her pale hands on the painted back door of the van.

The sound of metal against skin echoed...and the skin was losing. The steel dented inward a bit but Cleo’s thin palms split and came away bloody. 

She wasn’t Super, Maeve thought. She would break a finger before she broke the van. Redness spread on the old woman’s hands, slick against the painted metal.

At last she stopped. Cleo stared up at the circle of blue sky above. 

“Goddamn it! Where is it? I can’t see the sun.”

She punched the simple painted flag once more. The sound echoed in the silo. Finally she stopped. She stood perfectly still.

“I did everything I was supposed to do. Every year, and every hour within it. This isn’t how it’s supposed to end if you do that.”

She stepped back and buried her withered face in her hands. She spoke as though addressing the sky. As if the sky represented all of the world outside, or Jesus and God if she believed in that. It had never come up in conversation, Maeve thought. Somehow that didn’t seem relevant to anything now. 

Perhaps she spoke to the _idea_ of something higher. Clouds, the sun, or Homelander. Or authority itself.

“You know, I was running around in bobby socks when they built this place. I can still hear that little Bert the Turtle song. _There was a turtle by the name of Bert. When danger came he never got hurt. He knew just what to do. He ducked and covered…”_

Her voice lowered. She gestured to the sky as though in supplication, with both open palms high.

“I had nightmares about the Russians ending the world in a big fireball...and then I got up, went to work, and eventually said hey, we did it! _It was supposed to be the end of history._ We won, right?”

She slapped the van with one open palm. Steel echoes rang. “If you _win,_ it’s not supposed to end in a hole in the ground. I’m never getting out of here. I’ve forgotten what the rest of the sky looks like. It’s only a circle of blue. Where is the sun? I don't know where my kids and grandkids are but their city is gone so they’re probably dead. I’ll never know. I did everything I was supposed to do, and I'm still going to die in a hole.”

She leaned her forehead against the bloody, painted steel. “They built this hole in 1963. It wasn’t supposed to be a tomb. They made Homelander before that. He wasn’t supposed to be _this._ But what could _I_ possibly have done? I voted. I paid my taxes. I worked so goddamn hard, every single day. I never even broke the dress code! I donated and I wore all the right ribbons. I was a good person. Back when that still mattered. Before the Rampages.”

Maeve couldn't help but notice that when Marisol talked about the Rampages, she most often said “we.” 

_We lost another city today. We have been in this for two years now. We are all coping in different ways._

Cleo didn’t talk about them much. But when she did, her sentences almost always started with an “I.” Maeve wondered if that was why her younger friend was coping better with everything than the gray-haired woman who had just picked a fight with an insensate machine, and obviously lost.

Maeve looked over her right shoulder, in the direction of Marisol’s voice. The young woman’s lips barely moved. “They were being swindled, all of them. But the one who was really being fooled was Hans.."

She heard the dull ring of rubber sneakers on the metal catwalk and turned her eyes back towards Cleo. The cook was on her feet again.

Cleo’s face had gone beet-red. Her blue-veined hands were both clenched into fists. 

Maeve had seen her get embarrassed before, and until this moment she had always handled it by dashing off to a different part of their prison and avoiding them both for a while. It had worked out well enough for two years.

Now, though, her expression was twisted with rage. She stepped towards Marisol, instead of away.

“What was that? Don’t get smug with me, missy!”

Marisol blinked and held up both palms in a defensive gesture. “What? No, that’s not what I meant...I’m sorry. It’s a line from an old movie, that’s all. Really old. Older than me, older than you--”

Cleo made a cutting gesture with her right hand. “Oh shut up, all you do is sit around judging me. You don’t pick up your share of the work half the time and I wind up scrubbing the kitchen so _he_ doesn’t have anything to complain about. I saw you sneaking off yesterday, you know. Followed you!”

She pointed one finger straight at Marisol’s face, almost touching the tip of her nose. “I found your stash, you lazy bitch. What is that even for? It would never work, you’ve seen too many movies and you’re going to get us both killed.”

Maeve saw Marisol’s strong left hand wrap around Cleo’s wrist. She pulled the invading arm down from her face. Her eyes widened. “Oh, goddamn it, Cleo…”

The old woman began to struggle in her grasp. She spit as she talked. Her features were going from red to purple. Like a bruise, or as though under too much pressure and about to burst apart from within. “When Homelander gets back--he’s going to find out eventually. He can see through the fucking walls you know. He can probably smell what you’re up to. Maybe if I tell him about your stupid ropes and crowbars he won’t laser me in half too.”

Maeve was about to step in between them when she felt herself freeze with surprise. “Ropes...and crowbars?”

“Damn it!” Marisol’s low-throated shout of frustration bounced off of the steel and concrete of the prison these three women had shared for two years. 

The two of them were a blur of white and gray uniforms to Maeve’s eyes. They swirled about one another for the flash of a moment. Their sneakers rang against the catwalk beneath them as they grappled. Maeve heard a single shrill scream--

And then a thud. Then silence. 

Marisol stood only a few paces away from Maeve. She gazed down from her place atop the platform at Cleo’s body far beneath it. A red stain spread outward from a crumpled torso. Her arms and legs stuck out at unnatural angles to form a broken, crooked shape.

Maeve heard a _whoosh_ sound far over her head. Her hands flew to her mouth. Her shoulders shook. 

She grabbed Marisol’s hand and stared straight into her eyes. Whatever the poor old woman had meant about the stash of ropes and crowbars, she thought, the pressing concern at the moment was Homelander. She knew the sound he made when he flew through the sky; the _whoosh_ that often preceded his return by mere moments. 

“He’s back.” Maeve hissed through gritted teeth. “Go lay out his clothes or scrub something. Don’t draw attention to yourself. Let me talk to him.”

She drew a deep breath. They nodded at one another. 

“It’s okay.” Maeve forced a smile. “It was an accident, and you’re my best friend. We’ll figure this out together.” 


	6. Chapter 6: With No More Shoulders

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Does every storm run out of rain?

**Chapter 6: With No More Shoulders**

Homelander's gold-trimmed, red-booted feet came to rest on the white-painted steel platform.

He glanced down at the lifeless body on the concrete far below, then at Maeve and back again. His red and white striped cape gave a faint _swish_ as he took a single step towards her.

He raised one blonde-brown eyebrow. His expression was neutral as he met Maeve’s eyes. “What happened here?”

_He doesn’t seem that interested in knowing._ She thought. In the moment Maeve decided to play into that. If he didn’t really care then she could pretend to share his sentiment. And she wouldn’t even have to risk a lie.

“What happened?” Maeve smirked. “You put two animals that didn’t get along in a cage, and you just kept shaking their cage until they fought each other. What did you expect, anyway?”

He gave a low chuckle. Homelander walked right past her, towards the long round hallways. “All right, I get it. I’ll take care of that later. Get me something out of the fridge for now.”

Her head spun a bit. She followed at his heels. 

But, she thought, she shouldn’t be surprised by his moods anymore. Homelander was not as simple as a lion, who left his den to feast and then returned satisfied, ready for pleasure and then sleep. 

He went out into the world, and reacted to it like a little boy in a temper tantrum. Then he came home when he was tired. 

So Maeve expected his moods to vary depending on what he did when he was playing with the world, and how that world reacted to him. 

Maeve’s only glimpse at that world was through the news, and of course cameras never captured everything. So she could only guess at what had made him happy, or disappointed, or full of rage. She could only see its effects. Most specifically, in how much he decided to hurt her.

Maeve walked into the silo’s sparse kitchen. It had an atomic-style lime-green refrigerator that looked as though it had been refurbished. The metal fridge door was heavy in her hand. It opened in a way that reminded her of the door handle on a midcentury car.

She took out a lasagna that Cleo had prepared, preheated the oven, and began to make dinner for Homelander. She found one of Cleo’s aprons in a narrow white drawer and used it to protect her starched floral dress from marinara sauce. Some of it still dripped on her shoes. They were stiff white heels with a pointed toe.

The two of them ate in silence. Maeve studied his face. After she had washed the dishes he invited her to sit beside him on the sofa. He wanted her to join him in watching some movie from the previous century, one he had already picked out. As usual.

Once she was seated on the yellow-and-white retro couch, Homelander scooted his body to the side. He gave a deep sigh, rested his blonde head on her lap, and kept his eyes on the screen. 

Maeve stroked his mane with her fingers. Nails coated with bright red polish disappeared into the thick blonde hair as she rubbed his scalp with her fingertips, then appeared again when she withdrew her hand.

She gave a small sigh.

These times were always a relief for her. _Less violence, more silence, that’s a welcome thing when it comes to dealing with Homelander._ She thought.

Yet in every moment where his head was on her lap and her fingers were in his hair, every relaxed stroke of her hands through his blonde mane...tension always buzzed in the back of her mind. It was many worlds away from the days when she used to relax in bed with Elena and watch reality tv shows together, making fun of everyone on the screen. 

With Homelander...in every moment of relaxation, she was struggling to find a way to pet the tiger without getting her hand bitten off. Usually, by playing mama tiger. But it wasn’t foolproof.

The next day came, and his mood was unchanged.

He had come home sulking and disappointed before. When he sulked, he spoke little. He often watched old movies on the television with his head resting on Maeve’s lap, his expression blank. They had sex less often then. When they did, he usually guided Maeve to sit astride him on the sofa and allowed her to do most of the work. 

The only thing new about what he was doing now was how long it lasted. Not a few days of sulking, or a week. Two months stretched on where he went out only occasionally, usually for supplies. Most of his time was spent quietly, whether this was in the presence of Maeve or alone. 

Maeve did not have a cell phone of course. He had told her in the beginning that if she was allowed to talk to anyone outside, even on the internet, she might tell the world where he hung his cape at the end of the day. They couldn’t hurt him, but they could do harm to his home and cause him too much of a headache. He didn’t want to have to move. 

Homelander had a cell phone, usually kept in a special pouch on his golden eagle belt. Now, it was in his hand more and more. She saw him staring at it and scrolling away for hours. Sometimes his face would twitch in irritation a bit, but then he would return to his state of ennui. 

For two months, Homelander spent so much of his time at home in the old missile silo that Maeve didn’t dare to ask Marisol about the stash of ropes and crowbars that Cleo had mentioned. Even when he was away, there was no way of knowing how long that state of affairs would last. Or to know the limits of his Super hearing.

Besides, Maeve knew she was the one Homelander talked to, and Marisol was the one he completely ignored. That made knowledge dangerous in her hands. He could tell if she was lying. She might implicate Marisol accidentally. Ignorance was safer.

Still, after the first three weeks or so, Maeve began to relax a bit. There were no new dents in the metal walls. No furniture was destroyed. He hadn’t even thrown a rock on a new city yet. Each day in which he was subdued, and calm, Maeve felt her shoulders unclench. One muscle fiber at a time.

Then after two months, she was asleep in bed. It was the predawn hour that always made the desert sky above her a deep blue. Or, at least, it made the small circle of sky that she could still see into a variable shade of indigo.

A terrifying crash awoke her. She heard glass, metal, and plastic smashed all in a single blow.

Maeve bolted upright in bed and stared straight ahead of her. 

The king-sized bed she shared with Homelander was in the same large round room as the sofa and television. Only partitions separated it from the kitchen. The sheets were white, the blankets checkered in retro shades of green that matched the painted steel walls. There were green and red throw pillows, and a white headboard. 

Homelander’s back was to her. The bright stars and stripes of his cape faced her bed. One red-gloved hand was at his side. 

The other was a fist, and he had just put that fist through the television. 

Something on that screen had set him off. And she never knew what.

He pulled his red fist out of the remains of the TV, and out of the deep indentation he had made in the wall behind it.

“These people…” Homelander growled. “Get what they deserve.”

He didn’t even glance back at Maeve. He simply dashed off down the hallway, into the vast area that used to contain a missile. Then he pushed hard against the earth and leapt straight up into the cloudless predawn sky above.

Over the ensuing hours Marisol helped Maeve clean up the mess and the two settled down to a simple meal. Since Homelander had disposed of the body of the last chef and had apparently been too overcome by ennui to bother replacing her, the two of them had begun to cook on alternate nights. Maeve soon found that she appreciated the distraction.

That evening they gathered around the radio. Maeve tuned it to BBC News.

_This is the strangest relationship one can have to the world._ Maeve thought. Sitting cut off from it, not even seeing it, only hearing the voices of it. And yet knowing beyond a doubt that the voices were real, that what they said was true--or at least their best grasp of a changing situation. After all, the voices on this radio station had never lied to her. They weren’t even aware she existed.

It was right before dawn when Homelander broke the TV and flew off. At noon that day, he had dropped a rock on Cairo.

A few hours later, he destroyed Houston. Then later, Osaka. All in the same manner, some debris from space that was about the size of the Statue of Liberty. Large enough to take out a city but not the entire nation around it.

Then, later, Mexico City. And it just kept going. 

Maeve found that she couldn’t hold still while the death tolls came in; that her body was suffused with a kind of energy to do something despite her complete powerlessness. Her hands shook. She had already done Marisol’s braids, so Marisol made a joking suggestion about how they still had flour and yeast.

Maeve seized upon the idea. She began to make bread.

_Well-kneaded dough has a relaxing texture,_ She thought. _Like the warm skin of a friend’s arm, when you rest your hand upon it. It’s comforting._

The next week and a half passed in a blur of sourdough, sleep, screaming internally, and silence.

Occasionally she would hear of the fate of a new city, and then she would stop baking bread to punch the walls. Steel broke, concrete cracked, but eventually her knuckles came away bloody and she realized it was pointless. 

So she would go back to baking. The warm, homelike scent of bread filled the living quarters of their old missile silo. They had provisions stocked up for months.

She lost herself in this routine. She lost her sense of time. And then she began to hear the radio again.

It was telling her that the destruction had ended. And still, Homelander had not returned to the old missile silo.

Eventually, she heard an old man on the radio.

He said that he was the President of the United States now. Maeve didn’t remember what he was before.

He had spent his life somewhere in the chain of command but never at the top. He was now at the top because of succession. Which meant that this old man was the President because everyone formerly above him in America was dead.

She couldn’t see his face. Maeve found that she sometimes stared at the radio as though it were a television, as though she could hear it better with her eyes upon it. But all they ever saw was small black stereo speakers. 

His voice sounded ancient. _The kind you hear out of your old uncle when he talks about the world wars and the price of gas._ Maeve thought. _I wonder what gas is going for now? In the world above…_

His name was Andrew Martin. His aged voice was steady and he rarely failed to be calm. He said all the right things, about how everyone has lost so many people they loved and how the world would never be the same. 

And then he paused. Maeve heard the shuffling of papers too close to a microphone.

“Homelander essentially destroyed every major city and then was spotted taking off into space. He has done so before. But this time, he did not return. There is no way of knowing why he did this, and a great deal of speculation about it. Did he decide to test the limits of his powers? Did he burn up in the sun? Will he ever come back, to wreak more devastation upon us?

“I would give anything to be able to answer that question for you. But any answer would be speculation on my part, and nothing more. 

“Only one thing is certain. All families have lost people whom they loved, and many families simply do not exist anymore. Places, too, are so devastated that they cannot really be called the same city. 

“We will never get back what we have lost. But this is not the end of the world. Not as long as I am speaking and you are hearing me. America, and all other nations as well. To everyone who has survived: We will endure. 

“In 1804, there were about one billion people in the world. In 1927, we numbered two billion. In 1960, three billion.

“Around that decade, the world’s population began to become more concentrated in the cities. More urban dwelling, less rural. It also grew exponentially due to industrial methods of food production. So by 1974, we reached the four billion milestone. In 1987, five billion. Six billion in 1999. Then seven billion in 2012.

“Homelander mostly targeted cities. Though of course the destruction of any infrastructure has crippling effects on the surrounding area, and the supply lines we need to keep our citizens provided for. Essentially, the damage was so extensive that the world has been dialed back to 1960 population levels.

“That is why I say to you that this is not the end of the world. Of all the people in 2012, all seven billion, less than half of them are alive today. Yet at the same time we are standing exactly where we stood before. Without the cities we have built over the ensuing decades or the people we have loved. But we were able to build. We will rebuild as well.”

Maeve stared at the wall beside her for a long moment.

_Only three billion people are left. At all. In the world. Alive._

She began to scream. She punched that wall with both Super fists until everything grew dim around her. She felt herself sink to the floor and lapse into a state somewhere between catatonic and wholly unconscious. 

When she awoke, it was the following day. She lay on the king-size bed with the white sheets, and Marisol was seated in a chair at her right. She was listening to the radio and fixing her intricate box braids with both hands. 

Marisol had swapped out her “hotel maid” uniform for a light blue coverall, the sort a mechanic might wear. Maeve wondered where she had found something like that.

Their eyes met. Maeve stared into Marisol’s deep brown eyes and saw her friend’s full lips twist into the shadow of a smile. Maeve was aware of the world around her at last, and Marisol knew it. It was obvious from both of their faces.

Marisol stood up from her chair and extended a long-fingered, delicate brown hand to Maeve. 

Maeve clasped it, and Marisol helped her out of bed. It was the gesture one gives to a wounded comrade, who only needs your hand. With a little help he will limp home from the battlefield and fight at your side once more. 

“Well,” Marisol shrugged. “I don’t think he’s coming back anytime soon. And you still haven’t asked me about how I plan to use those ropes and crowbars to climb our way up to the open top of this silo. The same way he always got in and out.”

Maeve gasped. Both her hands flew to her mouth. 

Then she threw her arms around her friend’s shoulders in a sisterly hug. They held one another tight.

Maeve burst into tears.

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> With all of the symbolism I use, it’s natural for some readers to think I’m coming from a place of anti-American sentiment. 
> 
> Whether they agree with the sentiment or not, it isn’t the full story in my case. I expatriated to Canada in 2012 from the United States. I feel an ocean of love for my current country while my former country...well, what I feel ranges from abject terror to empathy to shame. It’s quite a mix. To the extent that I have a goal, it’s not to make people dislike America. It’s to shed light on America’s toxic imperialism and offer alternatives.
> 
> The country that I love, Canada, is best described as a man standing with one foot in his colonial legacy and the other foot in a social democracy. As I call it...one foot in Sweden and the other in the States. I have personally seen how horrible things can get in the States. If I have one message for my beloved Canada, it’s to put both feet in Sweden where they belong. And I hope America can catch up.


End file.
